Game Watch: Sony's Paris Games Week Conference Summary & Reactions

Sony kicked off Paris Games Week with - as expected - a montage, which I really enjoyed. It served to remind watchers that, while the offerings at the end of 2015 are a little slim on PlayStation, 2016 is going to be awesome.

With that in mind, things continued with a look at Call Of Duty: Black Ops III's Zombies mode. This was in the form of a pretty cliched trailer, but - as always - it looked like a lot of fun. It's still crazy that Call Of Duty is tied with PlayStation and having it at a PS Conference feels just as insane.

As if we hadn't been bombarded enough with Star Wars already, we were then reminded that - of course - Battlefront's release is imminent. A new, very cool trailer was released. The lack of single player still disappoints me, but the score for that trailer almost makes up for it...almost.

The focus then turned toward Street Fighter; the franchise I wish I cared about, but really don't.Things started with the announcement of a Dhalsim redesign (I'm sure that means something to someone). We were then informed that six more characters will be added to the game in the year following its launch before a launch date of February 16th 2016 was revealed.

Trailers then dropped for Tekken 7 (which is coming to PS4 and PS VR) and Battleborn (which seems to have that Gearbox charm and humour: something which assures me that it'll do well).

Then two new titles were announced: Boundless and Vector. Boundless is a puzzle game which houses different realities that all look very different and very beautiful. Vector is a rhythm game.

Finally we have a No Man's Sky release date and - less excitingly - a new trailer. The trailer was very cool and a little more serious that those we've seen before: it had a voice-over and showed off what the game really is. We'll be able to play it in June 2016, not - as some people predicted - this week. But still, who knows, it could be on PS VR.

Housemarque's new game - Matterfall - was then announced, and it looks awesome. Looking back over the new announcements and trailers from the conference, I'm definitely most excited about this one and I really can't wait to hear more about it.

We then got a new Ratchet and Clank trailer before the big event (for me at least): a new gameplay demo for Horizon: Zero Dawn, which you can watch below. Interestingly, according to Colin Moriarty on Kinda Funny's PS I Love You XOXO the demo shown today was the press demo that he saw at E3. I really can't wait for this game, but I do want to see a little more of it, just to prove to myself that there is more than just shooting at these dinosaur-things. The lack of any more story shown today worries me very slightly, but I'm sure - eventually - we'll see a bit more about that.

Then, a look at the Bloodborne Old Hunter DLC (which looks like more Bloodborne, which is awesome) and the announcement of Driveclub Bikes, which is a stand-alone DLC that lets the player - surprise, surprise - drive a bike instead of a car. Guess what - it's also out today! I thought that bit was cool; I hate the name. This was succeeded by a new gameplay trailer for Gravity Rush 2.

The long-awaited reveal of the Uncharted 4 Multiplayer was up next, with some impressive throwbacks to earlier in the series, the expected goofiness and a lot of old characters returning. All in all it looked a lot of fun; the beta is from the December 4th to 13th on PS4.

Media Molecule then took to the stage to show us what exactly Dreams is. This was through a gameplay demo that was wonderfully weird and - I think - got people to understand the game a little more. It doesn't do anything for me, but I've never really been into that kind of thing; I'm sure those who are were impressed.

Shuhei Yoshida then came on in order to inform us about PlayStation VR: we saw RIGS, Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood, Robinson: The Journey and Battle Zone. They all looked cool - I'm not 100% sure why Rush Of Blood is part of the Until Dawn family: that doesn't make sense to me - but, apart from that I was impressed. But, more than that - I finally got VR: more on that later.

Polyphony revealed Gran Turismo Sport: the latesed GT game and - crucially - it'll be coming to PS VR. There'll be a Beta in 2016. The penultimate game shown was WiLD, a game that's set in the pre-historic world. I'll be honest, it didn't quite do it for me. I get that it's in the very early stages, but there was just something missing, and I don't know if more development time can fix that.

Finally, another big announcement: Quantic Dream's new game: Detroit. I don't quite know how I feel about it yet: it looks really interesting, but we've be let down before. I'll let you make your own mind up.

Reactions

Anyone expecting this to be an E3-style presentation will have been sorely disappointed. Luckily, I wasn't expecting that - in all honesty, I wasn't expecting anything so coming off the back of it, I'm impressed. I thought this was a really good showing from Sony and - despite PlayStation Experience in December - we actually got some rather large announcements.

But - as I mentioned earlier - what I really took away from it was about VR. One of the videos we saw in the VR section was of people using it to experience scenes from Sony Pictures' new movie The Walk. We saw people genuinely scared to be "walking along" that small tightrope, which was suspended thousands of feet above the ground. The fact that VR can do that to people; that it can make them feel as though they're really in that terrifying situation unlocks the true potential of gaming, and - in my mind - will allow the industry to progress to the next level.

An article I've been working on for a long time now is about why I play video games. The summary of that article is that I play them because they can let me escape to places and situations which I can only dream of. VR can take that experience one step further. I get it; finally.